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VG Siddhartha, the founder of India’s largest Coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day who is also the son-in-law of former Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna, is reportedly missing since Monday evening.
According to media reports, Siddhartha got off from his car near a bridge across the Nethravathi River near Mangalore, about 375 km from Bengaluru, but did not return even after an hour.
A panicked driver went down looking for him, but could not find him anywhere. He then alerted the family members who in turn informed the police.
The Dakshina Kannada police have launched a massive search for him. According to his driver, Siddhartha, known as the Coffee King of India, was talking to someone on his mobile phone when he got off from the car near Kotekar.
The news of Siddhartha’s disappearance has spread like wildfire across Karnataka and hundreds of his relatives and friends have gathered at his father-in-law and former Karnataka CM SM Krishna’s house in Bengaluru.
Meanwhile, VG Siddhartha’s letter to employees and its board of directors has been found.
Founder & owner, Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), #VGSiddhartha‘s letter to employees and board of directors of CCD, states, “Every financial transaction is my responsibility…the law should hold me & only me accountable.”; He has gone missing from Mangaluru, search operation underway. pic.twitter.com/0GJc5vmvYt
— ANI (@ANI) July 30, 2019
The letter dated July 27, states, “Every financial transaction is my responsibility…the law should hold me & only me accountable.”
He said that having created 30,000 jobs directly, he has still “failed to create the right profitable business model despite best efforts”.
“I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I fought for a long time but today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure from one of the private equity partners forcing me to buy back shares, a transaction I had partially completed six months ago by borrowing a large sum of money from a friend.
“There was a lot of harassment from the previous DG income tax in the form of attaching our shares on two separate occasions to block our Mindtree deal and then taking position of our Coffee Day shares, although the revised returns have been filed by us,” he said in the letter.
